Columbia Steelhead Get Protected Status Some Oregon, California Areas Not Covered By The Declaration

Citing Oregon’s ground-breaking plan for restoring salmon habitat, the federal government announced Friday it will hold off giving threatened species protection to three populations of steelhead on the Oregon and California coasts.

However, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared threatened species protection for steelhead populations in the lower Columbia River Basin, which includes the Portland metropolitan area, and California’s Central Valley from Red Bluff through Sacramento to Modesto.

The regions that escaped listing are the Oregon Coast, which includes the Umpqua River; the Klamath Mountains Province, which includes Oregon’s Rogue and California’s Klamath and Smith rivers; and the Northern California coast, which includes the Mad, Eel and Mattole rivers.

NMFS Northwest Regional Director Will Stelle said Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Oregon restoration plan was the fundamental reason that steelhead on the Klamath Mountains Province were not listed.

“If they had not done that, we would have listed. It is absolutely a fact,” Stelle told a news conference.

“There can be no quibbling about what the science says,” NMFS Director Rollie Schmitten said. “It tells us that with a few exceptions, steelhead are in trouble - real trouble - throughout the West Coast.”

Dams have blocked access to rivers where steelhead lay their eggs. Logging, road building and development have stripped the trees that keep streams cool enough for young steelhead to survive.

Clear-cutting along the banks has eliminated the woody, debris-filled hiding places that fish need, and led to erosion that clogs streams. Water pumping for irrigation and dam releases also have changed river flows and temperatures.

“It took us a generation or maybe two to dig ourselves the hole we are in now. It will take a generation or more to dig ourselves out,” Stelle said.

Kitzhaber said the cause for celebration was not that NMFS decided against listing these populations, but rather that states have restoration plans.

“This decision today demonstrates again how states can take the lead,” he said.

Long resisting such conservation efforts, California recently started to follow Oregon’s lead. That effort resulted in the Central Valley population gaining threatened species status, rather than the more stringent endangered species listing, said Terry Garcia, assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere for the U.S. Department of Commerce.

California signed a memorandum of agreement with NMFS calling for habitat conservation efforts patterned after Oregon’s 1997 plan, which had persuaded NMFS not to list coho salmon on the Oregon Coast. Coho are listed as threatened in the Klamath Mountains Oregon has committed an extra $2 million to expanding that plan to include steelhead.

The lower Columbia River listing includes the Willamette River up to Willamette Falls at Oregon City, and the Clackamas and Sandy rivers. On the Washington side, the zone includes Kelso and the Cowlitz and Kalama rivers.

Bringing the Endangered Species Act out of rural areas and into the city will test the public’s resolve to save salmon, said Jim Myron, conservation director for the conservation group Oregon Trout.

Other environmentalists were disappointed that NMFS would not list the Klamath Mountains and Oregon Coast populations.

“In the Klamath River Basin, those fish have been declining 10 percent annually,” said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “Their failure to list is clearly a political deal with the Wilson administration. We have never seen any commitment by the California governor’s office to do anything but delay as long as possible.”

The timber industry remained committed to supporting Kitzhaber’s voluntary restoration efforts, said Ray Wilkeson of the Oregon Forest Industries Council.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Steelhead trout A prized sport fish, steelhead are anadromous rainbow trout. Born in freshwater streams, they migrate to the sea to mature then return to their native rivers to spawn. Unlike salmon, they can spawn more than once.